Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics

Fabulous fibres are the starting point, take a look to find out more about what comes next….

Cotton Fibres grow naturally on the cotton boll, they are microfibres, tens of thousands grow in each boll. These are the building blocks for cotton yarns. The finer and stronger the fibres, the softer and lighter the fabric can be.

Yarn is the building block of all knitted and woven fabric, it is made from fibres. For natural fibres, this involves twisting them together.

Full Circle FIbres’ Australian Cotton Yarn – ready for weaving.

Originally humans did this by hand, for thousands of years, and then during the industrial revolution, this process was mechanised and finessed to give us the precision manufacturing we use today.

Yarns for handcrafts, knitting, crochet, handwaving and more, need to be thicker than the yarn used for weaving and knitting fabrics industrially.

4 ply Australian Cotton Yarn, gauge sample – Denim Mix

These yarns are made by plying (twisting) the single thin cotton yarns together, through this method we’ve made our Fine Yarn, 4 Ply and DK yarns.

This plying is done at a different mill to the spinning – yes it’s another process!

Woven fabrics involve yarns crossing over each other in two directions. The warp yarns run the length of the fabric and the weft yarns are across the width.

Full Circle Fibres – ‘Linen Look’ Woven Cotton with scale

The fineness, texture and content of the yarn, in combination with the weave construction give the fabric its qualities.

Knitted fabric is made by looping together yarn in rows. It’s the loops in the yarn that allow the fabric to stretch in many directions, this along with using a soft high quality yarn, gives a fabric the comfort factor.

100% Australian Cotton Single Pique Washed Navy knitted fabric

All the knits in Full Circle Fibres’ range are weft knits, made on circular knitting machines – essentially like making a great big sock, or tube, of fabric. This is dyed and then sliced open to make the flat fabric.

Large Market Bag – Every stage Australian

Love our story but you aren’t feeling crafty – take a look at our Story Bags – ready to go anywhere with you. 100% Australian made, with raw cotton that hasn’t seen water since it was in the paddock. Find them here